Going Nowhere
by whatthefoucault
Summary: The Brigadier has a word with Turlough.


"Turlough, would you mind staying behind a moment? I was hoping we could have a word."

It was all he could do to hide his annoyance at Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart's request, and he was not sure he hid it well. He slumped exasperated against the door frame, waiting for the other students to shuffle like a colony of giggling zombies from the room. Exile was bad, and exile on Earth was terrible, but exile in a boys' public school on Earth was a punishment he would not have wished on his worst enemy. It was intolerable at best; most of the time, impossible.

He had, at first, attempted to maintain a low profile. This had proved difficult, considering that he risked being singled out for his undeniable advancement in comparison to the children he was surrounded by if he completed his pathetically rudimentary schoolwork in earnest. Besides, it was insulting to suggest he spend his mental energy engaged in thankless busywork that was so far beneath him. By Earth's standards, for that matter, he was old enough to hold the equivalent of an undergraduate degree, and by sane persons' standards, the curriculum at Brendon was better suited to a nursery school.

As such, Turlough had tried to distract himself with the usual vices of misunderstood youth: what little contraband cigarettes and alcohol were available to him were, it turned out,wasted on his Trion metabolism; television was all right, but mostly terrible; music was good, though he could only cycle through his small stack of LPs so many times before he slightly wished that Midge Ure and Ian Curtis and company would stop complaining. None of _them_ were stranded on a backward hole of a planet with no way of returning home, at least as far as he knew.

He had tried to distract himself with one of the other boys, a pretty but stupid young creature named Cosgrove, who was all too eager to offer what turned out to be an embarrassingly inept blowie round the back of the equipment shed, and who then followed him about the school like a sickeningly lovestruck puppy for the next two weeks. Turlough disgusted himself for having descended to such humiliating new lows.

Sometimes, he condescended to involve himself in some juvenile prank or other for a laugh, but was typically able to talk himself out of punishment, or talk one of the boys into accepting responsibility in exchange for an extra bakewell slice from the tuck shop. It was a thoroughly disagreeable life he was forced to endure.

"You haven't kept me behind because you still think I had anything to do with sawing halfway through the legs of Hippo's chair, have you, sir?" Turlough shrugged innocently, pushing himself gracefully from the doorway with his shoulder. "Because I can assure you it was nothing to do with me. I'd never stoop to something so... banal."

"No, Turlough, you're quite safe," replied the Brigadier, gathering the day's assignments into his briefcase. "As I understand, the perpetrator has been found."

"Flogged?" Turlough enquired out of vague curiosity.

"Yes, I expect so," nodded the Brigadier. Turlough considered this a moment.

"Doesn't it occur to anyone that some students misbehave on purpose because they enjoy a good flogging?" he asked, leaning nonchalantly against the Brigadier's desk.

"What?" the Brigadier's eyes grew wide with confused surprise.

"Oh, not me," Turlough shrugged with an innocent grin, "but one does... hear about these sorts of things, don't you know. Sir."

Perhaps an unfair question, he thought, but surely someone at some point must have wondered.

The Brigadier was a stuffy, ex-military sort of fellow; Turlough was familiar enough with the type. He had clearly been too preoccupied with military things to get married, or perhaps too busy to _stay_ married, or perhaps he was simply otherwise inclined. Probably not one to go quietly into the dark black night, or however that rage poem went, he had likely objected highly to the prospect of retirement, and eventually accepted a teaching post in order to grasp desperately onto whatever semblance of command remained available to him in his advancing middle age. He was not the type to accept redundancy or uselessness, not after years of faithful service to Queen And Country. Perhaps he had suffered a post-traumatic stress, a nervous breakdown, something to cut short an otherwise sterling military career. _Those who can, do; those who can't, teach_, after all. Upon reflection, Turlough very nearly felt a sort of kinship with the man, both of them displaced from where they belonged, even if the Brigadier's circumstances were clearly nothing compared to being banished to the interplanetary equivalent of Siberia - or possibly Serbia, but probably one of the two, if he had accidentally absorbed anything while sketching the view out of the classroom window in lieu of his geography notes.

"Now look here, you need to shape up, young Turlough," declared the Brigadier.

Turlough sighed, a strange new dread welling in the pit of his belly. This was no punishment; rather, this was _concern_. Perhaps the Brigadier wanted to help him. If only he could casually explain that the only help he needed was someone who could help build a long-range space shuttle equipped with a cloaking mechanism.

"Yes, sir," sighed Turlough, rolling his eyes.

"I'm serious," replied the Brigadier. "It's abundantly clear that you're a very bright young man, possibly the brightest student I've seen."

"Yes, well, that's not much of an achievement, is it?" Turlough rolled his eyes.

"Do be serious, boy," advised the Brigadier, quirking an eyebrow in that unintentionally charming way he had of doing. "You need to apply yourself, to engage. You're clever enough to know that your intelligence won't do you any good if you don't put it to use. If you don't put in the work now, you won't get the marks you obviously deserve, and -"

"And if I don't get the marks, I won't get into a good university, and if I don't get into a good university I won't get a good job, and I can't live off of Mummy and Daddy's estate forever, is that what you were going to tell me, sir?" asked Turlough. It was a speech he was coming to know with irritating familiarity.

"More or less," conceded the Brigadier, "but the sentiment remains true. I can't simply grant you top marks because I know you _could_ have done well. You have to at least put forth an effort."

"What for?" Turlough scoffed, slumping against the chalkboard. "I don't care about getting a good job, I just want to get off this miserable dump of a planet."

It was not often that Turlough allowed himself to speak so carelessly, and it was only after that he registered the full extent of what he had just confessed. He wondered what the Brigadier must have been thinking; that he was delusional, or self-destructive. The Brigadier regarded him a moment with wide-eyed confusion, but warmed into a knowing smile.

"Oh, but there are much worse planets, surely," reasoned the Brigadier.

It was the closest Turlough had come to confiding in anyone. It almost felt like a relief. He almost felt a rapport with the Brigadier. It could be useful at least to have an ally, he thought. It might be nice to have a friend who was actually allowed to drink in pubs.

"Believe it or not, I was your age once," he continued. "I could have been anything I wanted, but never took that fact for granted."

"And you chose the military," Turlough nodded, plucking at a stray thread that poked from his shirt cuff.

"I think it's fair to say the military chose me," replied the Brigadier, with a self-deprecating chuckle.

"Do you miss it?" asked Turlough.

"Yes," he replied. The candour with which he spoke seemed to surprise them both.

"In a sense, we're neither of us where we belong," Turlough observed, as the Brigadier absently straightened the stack of worn textbooks on his desk. Turlough had not meant to make the connection, but now that he had, he nearly allowed himself to wonder if connecting itself might not be a welcome diversion, possibly even comforting. It felt stupid to feel so lonely.

"I suppose I could be very unhappy about that if I wanted to," he said. "You might have a lot of things to be angry and unhappy about, but you're here whether you like it or not, and it's up to you to find a way to make the best of it."

Turlough nodded. As he drew nearer, he could see that the Brigadier's sympathetic gaze betrayed a quiet sorrow, as though he knew he had lost something very important, but could no longer remember what it was.

"One would hate to see such obvious talent go to waste. If there's anything you want to talk about, anything I can do to help," offered the Brigadier. He was admittedly quite handsome when he was being kind.

"There might be a few things I can think of," suggested Turlough, inching slightly further into the Brigadier's personal space.

"Steady on, young man," admonished the Brigadier. Turlough could feel the Brigadier's composure wavering, as he traced the length of his rough tweed sleeve. Whether it was out of shock or acquiescence that the Brigadier did not move away when Turlough's fingers brushed against the back of his neck, Turlough could not say.

"I'm not as young as you think," he grinned, tracing a fingertip over the Brigadier's jawline.

"Turlough," he whispered, an invitation, or perhaps a warning.

Turlough decided to believe it was the former, and kissed him.

The Brigadier did not move at first, as though in shock, but let out at last a long sigh, moving quietly against Turlough's lips.

Turlough felt weightless and terrified, as though he might fall into space; in that moment, it had become far more frightening than being tethered to Earth. But the Brigadier anchored him there, encircling his waist, tasting of tea and England. The Brigadier felt warm and strong, and Turlough arched against him, aching for contact. The desperation he felt would have been embarrassing, had it not been shared. Instead, he felt the Brigadier let out a moan that hummed through him as he loosened the top button of his shirt.

It was only when Turlough's hand slipped with no small amount of insistence past the waistband of the Brigadier's trousers that the Brigadier seemed to jolt out of his reverie, and they breathlessly broke apart.

"I think you should go," he whispered, his breaths ragged and confused, staring at the floor, as though afraid of what he might allow himself to do, if their eyes met.

"We could - " Turlough began in earnest.

"We can't," the Brigadier shook his head.

"Of course not," he muttered, his hands curling into tight fists as he ran from the room.


End file.
